Best Free Internet Telephone ??????

[mol3000]

Which FREE telephone service or software is the best???? Also how secure are they and/or how can you make them secure ??????

[hudsonf]

I don't know about free but I'm trying out Vonage and so far it's great. If I still like it after a month or two I'm going to drop my regular ground line.

[ViRaL1]

If I used my home phone for much I'd consider Vonage. The downside for me is that my broadband is DSL so I can only get rid of so much. I still have to have basic phone service in order to have DSL. Hopefully some level of deregulation will make this unnecessary in the future.

[Roundabout]

You didn't mention if you just wanted to make calls over the internet, or to land lines (PSTN). Vonage has the best reviews all over, for making calls to PSTN numbers.

However, if you want to make calls to others over the internet only, then Skype is the best out there right now, and it's totally free when you make calls from PC to PC anywhere in the world.

From their website:

Skype in a nutshell.
Our software’s quick and easy to get started with. Download, register, install, plug in your headset, speakers or USB phone and start calling your friends. The calls have excellent sound quality and are highly secure with end-to-end encryption. You don’t even need to configure your firewall or router or any other networking gear. It just, you know… works.

Also, recently they added the capability to call PSTN numbers:

Calling regular phone numbers.
If there weren’t enough ways for you to contact your friends, we have a little thing called SkypeOut. It let’s you make calls to old-fashioned phone numbers all around the world. Landlines, mobile phones... it works with almost all of them. SkypeOut is not free but it is pretty cheap, actually. You can read more about SkypeOut if you wish.

www.skype.com

[mol3000]

thanks i will check it out

[fmctm1sw]

Great thread. Does this work for international calls?

[Roundabout]

Great thread. Does this work for international calls?

Sure does, PC to PC for free from anywhere to anywhere in the world. Both ends have to have Skype running, of course.

You can make international calls PC to PSTN anywhere, but that isn't free, since they have to pay to terminate the connections through the local network.

[mol3000]

i need one thats free pc to phone just in this country

[Supreme2k]

And what is "this country" you are talking about?

[Roundabout]

Well, assuming you are in the USA, the only one I am aware of that is left for free PC to PSTN calling is ClickTel.

LINK

They claim to offer free PC to Phone calling, I haven't tried it, but it is free, so why not? Dialpad and the others have all gone to charging for their service, but this one e-mailed me out of the blue telling me about the free service, otherwise I never would have been aware of it.

If you try it and it works, post back here and let me know your experience with it. I might sign up if it works, though I don't really need the service very much.

Roundabout

[ps2daddy]

i need one thats free pc to phone just in this country

I think they went the way of the dinosaur there was one I use to like you could talk phone to phone for free but you had to go to a website to type in the phone number you wanted to call and your number

Then the phone would ring and it would connect you to the other person.

To stay on the phone you had to keep clicking on a button on the webpage.

This service charges just like dialpad now

These were the fun days of test marketing to see if people would actually use it like free GB internet storage space...........aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh.......man those were the days


Everybody want to make money so if you find one that sounds free now there is probably some catch to it.

[mol3000]

i will try it and let you no how it is.... i just tryied stanphone and they charge if u call out but if somebody calls you its free.... also pc to pc its free..... i will let u no though

[mol3000]

tried clicktel.com and they are garbage.... it suppose to do pc to phone call free but it wont even let me dial anything and i have to go on their site for it to work........ what a headache

[Roundabout]

Well, I guess you can't expect much for free

Sorry. It was the only one I know about that is totally free to use. Like I said, I hadn't tried it myself, but might have if it had worked. What happened when you tried to dial? Did you get any kind of message, anything at all?

Too bad Dialpad started charging. I used to use it all the time, even on a 56K line it sorta worked o.k., if you had patience.

Then I used "Pagoo" for a while, which would forward your calls to any number you specified on their website, so you could make PSTN to PSTN calls for free to anywhere in the USA. I really used it while it lasted, but it only lasted about 2 or 3 months before it disappeared.

There was even a free one that let you call 45 different countries in the world, even Russia - to normal phones from your PC! That disappeared too.

So I guess the only thing left to do is pay for service, and Vonage has the best reviews of the ones available now. From the reviews I read, stay away from AT&T VoIP service.